Texans will attend memorial service for fallen firefighters

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Wednesday morning after their ninth organized team activity session, the Texans players and coaches will go together to the public memorial for four fire fighters who were killed on Friday.

The memorial service will start at 10 a.m. at Reliant Stadium.

“It’s important to us as an organization and a team,” coach Gary Kubiak said. “The players, we talked about it yesterday. We want to show our support for our community and for those families. We look forward to being there to show our support tomorrow.”

In order to be able to attend, the Texans moved practice to 8 a.m. instead of 11:15 a.m.

“We’re pushing time up and nobody’s complaining about being here early in the morning because we know what this really is about,” safety Danieal Manning said. “It could have been anyone’s family member, so you always want to be able to show support in that way. … It doesn’t take any time to just go there. You should want to do that. We’re all supposed to all treat each other right and do the right thing, so that’s what we should do.”

The four fire fighters were killed fighting a five-alarm fire at a motel on Friday. Several others were hospitalized with injuries.

“It’s something that as players we talked with the coaches and just tried to work it out when we found out it was going to take place in our building tomorrow,” quarterback Matt Schaub said. “It’s important for us, being members of this community to be a part of that community and when something like this happens, we all rally around each other as citizens. So I think it says a lot about what’s important to us as a football team and an organization.”

It was the deadliest day in Houston Fire Department history. The fire was at a motel in southwest Houston.

“It’s a very humbling deal to be able to go in and support this community in the best manner that we can,” said punter Shane Lechler, who grew up in East Bernard. “Those are the real heroes. We are here mainly to win football games and entertain people. Those guys save lives. To be able to go and support the fallen and the ones that are still injured and in the hospital, it means a lot to us, it means a lot to me to just be a part of it.”